Ego ideal
The ego ideal is the inner image of oneself as one wants to become.Salman Akhtar, Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (2009) p. 89 Alternatively, 'The Freudian notion of a perfect or ideal self housed in the superego',Howard Rosenthal, Human Services Dictionary (2003) p. 102 consisting of 'the individual's conscious and unconscious images of what he would like to be, patterned after certain people whom...he regards as ideal'.Eric Berne, A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (Penguin 1976) p. 96 In the French strand of Freudian psychology, the ego ideal (or ideal ego) has been defined as "an image of the perfect self towards which the ego should aspire."Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, The Ego Ideal: A Psychoanalytic Essay on the Malady of the Ideal, 1st American ed., trans. Paul Barrows, introduction by Christopher Lasch (1984; New York: W.W. Norton, 1985), originally published as Idéal du moi (Paris: Tchou, 1975). ISBN 0-393-01971-3. Freud, ego ideal, and superego In Freud's "On Narcissism: an Introduction" 1914, among other innovations - 'most important of all perhaps - it introduces the concepts of the "ego ideal" and of the self-observing agency related to it, which were the basis of what was ultimately to be described as the "super-ego" in The Ego and the Id (1923b)'.Angela Richards, "Editor's Note", in Sigmund Freud, On Metapsychology (PFL 11) p. 62 Freud considered that the ego ideal was the heir to the narcissism of childhood: the 'ideal ego is now the target of the self-love which was enjoyed in childhood by the actual ego...is the substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood'.Freud, On Metapsychology p. 88 The decade that followed would see the concept playing an ever more important and fruitful part in his thinking. In "Mourning and Melancholia"1917, Freud stressed how 'one part of the ego sets itself over against the other, judges it critically, and, as it were, takes it as its object'.Freud, On Metapsychology p. 256 A few years later, in "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego"1921, he examined further how 'some such agency develops in our ego which may cut itself off from the rest of the ego and come into conflict with it. We have called it the "ego ideal"...heir to the original narcissism in which the childish ego enjoyed self-sufficiency'.Sigmund Freud, Civilization, Society and Religion (PFL 12) p. 139 Freud reiterated how 'in many forms of love-choice...the object serves as a substitute for some unattained ego ideal of our own', and further suggested that in group formation 'the group ideal...governs the ego in the place of the ego ideal'.Freud, Civilization p. 143 and p. 160 With "The Ego and the Id"1923, however, Freud's nomenclature began to change. He still emphasised the importance of 'the existence of a grade in the ego, a differentiation in the ego, which may be called the "ego ideal" or "super-ego"',Freud, On Metapsychology p. 367 but it was the latter term which now came to the forefront of his thinking. 'Indeed, after The Ego and the Id and the two or three shorter works immediately following it, the "ego ideal" disappears almost completely as a technical term'Richards, p. 348 for Freud. When it briefly reappears in the "New Introductory Lectures"1933, it was as part of 'this super-ego...the vehicle of the ego ideal by which the ego measures itself...precipitate of the old picture of the parents, the expression of admiration for the perfection which the child then attributed to them'.Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis(PFL 2) p. 96 Stekel's ego-ideal Ernest Jones records that 'I once asked Freud if he regarded an "ego-ideal" as a universal attribute, and he replied with a puzzled expression: "Do you think Stekel has an ego-ideal?"'.Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (Penguin 1964) p. 403 Further developments Freud's followers would continue to exploit the potential tension between the concepts of superego and ego ideal. 'Hermann Nunberg defined the ideal ego as the combination of the ego and the id. This agency is the outcome of omnipotent narcissism and is manifested as pathology'.Sophie de Mijolla-Mellor "Ego Ideal/Ideal Ego" Otto Fenichel, building on Sandor Rado's 'differentiation of the "good" (i.e., protecting) and the "bad" (i.e., punishing) aspects of the superego'Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946) p. 412 explored attempts to 'distinguish ego ideals, the patterns of what one would like to be, from the superego, which is characterized as a threatening, prohibiting, and punishing power':Fenichel, p. 106 while acknowledging the linkages between the two agencies, he suggested for example that 'in humor the overcathected superego is the friendly and protective ego-ideal; in depression, it is the negative, hostile, punishing conscience'.Fenichel, p. 399 In narcissism Kleinians like Herbert Rosenfeld 're-invoked Freud's earlier emphasis on the importance of the ego ideal in narcissism, and conceived of a characteristic internal object - a chimerical montage or monster, one might say - that was constructed of the ego, the ego ideal, and the "mad omnipotent self"'.James S. Grotstein, "Foreword", Neville Symington, Narcissism: A New Theory (London 1993) p. xiii-xiv In their wake, Otto Kernberg highlighted the destructive qualities of the 'infantile, grandiose ego ideal' - of 'identification with an overidealized self- and object-representation, with the primitive form of ego-ideal'.Otto Kernberg, Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism (London 1990) p. 239 and p. 102 Harold Bloom has since explored in a literary context how 'in the narcissist, the ego-ideal becomes inflated and destructive, because it is filled with images of "perfection and omnipotence"'.Harold Bloom, Jay Gatsby (2004) p. 92 Escape from such 'intense, excessive, and sometimes fatal devotion to the ego-ideal' - 'To the narcissist, the only reality is the ego-ideal' - is only possible when one 'gives up his corrupt ego-ideal and affirms the innocence of humility'.Harold Bloom, Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov (2004) p. 120-1 and p. 133 Ideal ego The ideal ego is a concept that has been particularly exploited in French psychoanalysis. Whereas Freud 'seemed to use the terms indiscriminately...ideal ego or ego ideal',Richards, p. 347 in the thirties 'Hermann Nunberg, following Freud, had introduced a split into this concept, making the Ideal-Ich genetically prior to the surmoi (superego).Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan (Oxford 1997) p. 284 Thereafter Daniel Lagache developed the distinction, asserting with particular reference to adolescence that 'the adolescent identifies him- or herself anew with the ideal ego and strives by this means to separate from the superego and the ego ideal'.Quoted in Mijolla-Mellor Lacan for his part explored the concept in terms of the subject's 'narcissistic identification...his ideal ego, that point at which he desires to gratify himself in himself'.Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (London 1994) p. 257 For Lacan, 'the subject has to regulate the completion of what comes as...ideal ego - which is not the ego ideal - that is to say, to constitute himself in his imaginary reality'.Lacan, p. 144 'Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel (1985) identified various possible outcomes for the ego ideal, perverse as well as creative'.Mijolla-Mellor See also * Idealization and devaluation * Narcissism * Narcissistic elation * Norm * Role model References Further reading * M. L. Nelson ed., The Narcissistic Condition (New York 1977) Category:Ego psychology Category:Freudian psychology Category:Personality Category:Narcissism